


delight me in such a way to torment me

by invitationtohell



Category: reality - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Historical Inaccuracy, Idiots in Love, Introspection, Misunderstandings, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Other, Romance, Unconventional Relationship, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, whatever your point of reference is when it’s a city and a concept
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-28 04:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18749107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/invitationtohell/pseuds/invitationtohell
Summary: It helps that she is there in the little silences. In the cracked glass of shopfronts once flit with trade, in the leaden grey passage of the river and even in the eyes of my people, I see her. She may never speak to me, but I know she is there.





	delight me in such a way to torment me

**Author's Note:**

> As you may have noticed, this is a ridiculous thought, spawned from a ridiculous post on metatextual wankery that I turned into a fanfic over the course of an evening. It’s my first published piece of writing in English. It’s a bit shit. But I am oddly proud of it.
> 
> Original inspiration was a post by prokopetz on Tumblr / Pillowfort, as follows:
> 
> “Honestly, fanfic where two characters ‘can’t be together’ because of some microscopic personal incompatibility doesn’t do much for me these days – like, at least justify it a little better. Two characters can’t be together because one of them’s a government agent and the other’s a criminal? Please. Now, if it’s two characters who can’t be together because one of them is the abstract concept of suffering and the other is the city of Prague, that would have my attention.”
> 
> Warnings for: mentions of violence and war, mentions of antisemitic violence, unhealthy relationships and coping strategies

It helps that she is there in the little silences. In the cracked glass of shopfronts once flit with trade, in the ~~~~leaden grey passage of the river and even in the eyes of my people, I see her. She may never speak to me, but I know she is there.

Where a child cries, she follows and I follow and we fall in-step-for-a-breath and she is gone. Out of my borders, faster than wind or thought, she is gone. She may never know me... Or rather she knows all of me, but may never remember me and I will never know her and I will never forget her.

She has a life outside my limits. I could never confine her. I would never want to; no, I would never trap her. But... I would nest her, when she needed to rest, for a little while, if she so wished. If only she but breathed a word my way, no, not even a word, not even a whisper. A glance.

 

* * *

 

Oh, I thought she’d notice for sure when the Empire collapsed and her people left her. I wanted to make a bold statement - a sort of declaration of intentions, if you will. And I managed it, right?

Some three quarters of million people grabbing their belongings and moving home and hearth in a hundred years! The golden towers of her neighbours crumbling, upheaval in trade and in morality, her people lost and found again - surely she’d see my hand in the proceedings, a certain twist in string of fate, as it were? She was called Bohemia then. She never replied.

Maybe she needs some space, I thought. A touch of subtlety can go a long way, right? I crept in carefully in the shadowed faces of the slaves in her market. I whispered sweetly to her in every argument; in the low-level anger of administrators late to meetings and the hungry stomachs of her famined people, I whispered. No divine intervention here, but a comfortable accord, I thought. Surely, she’d give a sign? She never answered.

I grew... hurt and feral in my aching, in the rejection. I ruined her prosperity when I killed her ruler. I smote her unity when I festered wounds within her people. I revelled in the throbbing pain of pillage, ransack and burning in the Jewish Quarter and I spat in her face with their deaths.

I couldn’t stop.

I was so filled with rage it hurt more than healed and I was so hurt I burnt more than I mended. And I knew she hated me. And I wanted her to; wanted to give her a reason to. I wanted anything but.

The Hussite Wars, the Thirty Years’ War, the plagues, fires and invasions. I impelled her fall, so it’d delight me in such a way to torment me, but... Oh, she was so shining strong. With her every new beginning I would remember how I fell in love with her. How I saw her earth soaked in her blood and salted with her tears and yet growing anew, all those many years ago. Even now, she grows.

She prospers, while I wallow in old hurts and count my blessings in the cries of my love’s loves.

Oh, but I am a fool.

 

* * *

 

Some time ago, I hoped a dream - a small, ridiculous dream. I hoped that my people’s suffering, all those long years of my heart tearing from their pain and fettling with their faith, was her hand in mine.

I would look out into the smoke and feel her small cold fingers, curling against the palm of my hand. Her deftness in their anger and their fear and in their slate-grey resignation, I would tender.

It comforted me, when little else could.

I know I was naive to believe it. Believe that a concept - a being as majestic and as vital and as beautiful as her - would lend me her personal attention. Believe that it was my land’s pain that was unique, when all lands suffer, when all people die.

I hoped a useless dream. I never spoke a word for fear I would hear it shatter.

Even when the world was at war once, twice, and I was reborn Czechoslovakia, my body scarred from bombing and sallow from loss, I clasped her hand in mine. I held it firm in faith that it is her will, I suffer, and her will alone, my people divine.

I did not falter. I aged.

In the end, I am not Bohemia. I am not Czechoslovakia.

What I remember, in the end, is being Prague. The threshold, _práh_ , of my people’s home - the rapids of Vltava; the thousand spires climbing one by one with my guiding hand to reach-but-never-quite-touch the canopy of heaven; the sparkling lives within me, joyful and sad and all so precious.

When I die - not for some years yet, I hope - I want it to be at her hand, that she may cradle my bones and my spires and my souls. That I might hear her whisper, just the once, “I will watch over your rest, my love. You did so well for me.”

Her, suffering, I wish to make my peace.

 

* * *

 

“Uh, hey! Sorry, the connection’s quite poor, I’ll have to shout a little. Umm... So. **D’YOU WANNA GO ON A DATE WITH ME?** ”

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally published on pillowfort: https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/641894
> 
> Check it out if you want!
> 
> The title comes from a quote by (apparently) Puccini: “Write me, so it delights me in such a way to torment me.”
> 
> Also, you may have noticed I sorta arbitrarily gave Prague and Suffering female pronouns, but I am going to assume they’re non-gender-binary / gender-less? How do I tag this?
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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